My memories of Glenn Burke are seen through the shards of shattered glass �" jagged edges refracting kaleidoscopic images of dazzle and despair, of waste and wonder, of fable and fate. Now as we recover from the triumphantly historic pitching domination of the San Francisco Giants in this year's World Series and settle into a winter of reflection while waiting for the first thaw of spring training, a long anticipated documentary promises Bay Area sports fans a chance to glimpse into the life and times of one of the greatest local athletes to have ever played among us.
Burke was a legend in his own time as a stellar basketball and baseball player at Berkeley High, a minor league phenom in the Dodgers organization before making the Los Angeles club in time to play in the 1977 World Series, an iconic figure in recreational LGBT basketball and softball leagues in the 1980s after retiring, and finally one of the many haunted faces of AIDS as he lay dying in his sister's Oakland home in the 1990s. He is credited with having first popularized the "high five" while playing with the Dodgers. His sexuality was a barely kept secret, spoken of in hushed and reluctant tones for most of his career, then openly scorned by his manager in his final stint with the Oakland A's. He came out in 1982 with a flare of celebrity, then disintegrated in a downward spiral of cocaine and mounting medical problems before dying in May 1995.
Out. The Glenn Burke Story, a one-hour documentary, will air commercial free Wednesday, November 10 on Comcast SportsNet Bay Area at 8 p.m., with a simultaneous screening at the Castro Theatre. Tickets for the Castro screening are $5 and can be purchased at www.csnbayarea.com/pages/out. The screening benefits Marty's Place, a communal living facility for HIV-infected homeless people.
"I grew up in Hayward back in the early 1970s, and there was a very strong group of people who would play basketball in a park near my house," the film's executive producer Ted Griggs told the Bay Area Reporter. "I would be shooting around with them and whenever someone would do something really spectacular, they would all go, 'That's just like Glenn Burke.' I would see his name in the paper when he played for Berkeley and so I followed his career, like you do with someone who's one of your own. I always wanted to do this story."
The film offers numerous interviews with Burke's friends and teammates from throughout his sports career from Berkeley to the gay softball and basketball leagues and the pro baseball stops in between. There is little insight into the precocious childhood and even less into the details of his decline in crime, addiction, and illness. Instead, it concentrates on the arc of a man's career that inspired awe throughout its trajectory, and the price extracted by intolerance and ignorance.
"This is a story of a person who was uncompromising," Griggs said. "He was who he was. He was not really trying to hide who he was. He said accept me for who I am, and he paid the consequences for that."
Burke was what is called a five-tool player in baseball: a player who excelled at running, throwing, fielding, hitting, and hitting with power. He is widely considered the best athlete ever to have played for Berkeley High, and basketball actually was a better athletic showcase of his prowess, but baseball was the more financially lucrative prospect for Burke in the 1970s. He tore up pitching at every stop throughout the Dodgers minor league system and was touted as the next Willie Mays.
In the film, a manic-depressive personality is anecdotally captured through tales of knockout punches and locker room antics of a man who would one moment be the irrepressible life of the party and a silent gloomy guss the next. And the tension between Burke's exploration of his sexuality and the uptight Dodgers management always teetered on the brink of confrontation. The Dodgers offered to pay Burke to get married, to which he quipped, "I guess you mean to a woman." He dated manager Tommy Lasorda's son, whom Lasorda repeatedly denied was gay.
And so Burke was traded from the homophobic Dodgers to his hometown team, the Oakland A's.
"I was shocked that he was traded," former Dodgers beat writer Lyle Spencer said. "I walked into the clubhouse, and guys were visibly distraught over the trade. That told me that my sense of how important he was to them internally was accurate. I even remember a few players crying when they found out about it at their lockers, which is stunning."
"I think the Dodgers knew," Dodger teammate Dusty Baker said. "I think that's why they traded Glenn."
From the Dodgers and into the crossfire of the A's. Playing in Oakland gave him greater opportunity to explore his wild side on the streets of the Castro. It also put him under the withering control of manager Billy Martin. In his first spring training with the A's, teammate Claudell Washington said, Martin "was introducing all the players and then he got to Glenn and said, 'Oh, by the way, this is Glenn Burke and he's a faggot.'"
After part of two seasons with the A's, Burke retired after 1979, then came out in 1982. After pro baseball, he poured his competitive fire into gay softball and basketball.
"He was awesome," said longtime LGBT softball guru Mark Brown. "He was absolutely the best. I never saw him play for the Dodgers or the A's, but in the gay softball leagues, there was nothing like Glenn. He was flawless on defense, and he was a great hitter."
That was when I first started to be aware of Burke. I had seen him play baseball during the 1977 World Series, and then was mesmerized by him in Gay Games I and II. Not so much in softball �" hey, in those days I was pretty much drooling over the hot players from Boston and didn't notice much else �" but in basketball he was truly a wonder to behold. He had such a creative genius that you had to watch him whatever he did even when he didn't have the ball.
A 1987 car crash ended all of that, crushing Burke's legs and spirit. He never fully recovered.
"When he had that accident by that car, over there by 16th and Market, in that triangle, his life wasn't the same because he couldn't participate in those sports," Brown said. "His life just went downhill. He was heavily into drugs all the time but he got into that more after the accident because of the pain. He loved his cocaine. After the accident, he went downhill completely."
And that is the way I remember Burke those last years: furtive, nearly vacant eyes staring from across the Pendulum or from a balcony in the Muni station. The skeletal apparition clutching the bedsheets at his sister's house off Oakland's Market Street as we talked for one last time about baseball and life and all the things that happen along the way. But then, even then that smile.
Like Alice's Cheshire cat.
So for me, the documentary is a chance to revisit a friend I never knew as well as I would have liked. For others, it will be a chance to meet one who was at the mercy of strangers. It is a sympathetic portrait with expressions of unintentional ignorance (his friends sometimes speak of the "lifestyle" he "chose") and warm admiration.
Out. The Glenn Burke Story will be rebroadcast at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, November 16. Visit www.csnbayarea.com for additional broadcast times.
Giants win the World Series!
The San Francisco Giants capped an exciting season with a World Series win over the Texas Rangers Monday night in Arlington. The Giants won the Series four games to one. It is San Francisco's first-ever World Series victory. The ticker-tape parade was held Wednesday, bringing out thousands of fans to cheer on the "lovable misfits" that made it through a thrilling post-season.
And the win also concludes the friendly wager made between B.A.R. publisher Thomas E. Horn and Robert Moore, publisher of the Dallas Voice, the leading LGBT paper in Texas.
"Congrats on the win," Moore said in an e-mail message. "It was a truly convincing series."
As promised, here's a photo of Moore decked out in a Giants shirt, with a check for $1,000 that will go to the Gay Straight Alliance Network, a San Francisco-based organization that empowers youth activists to fight homophobia and transphobia in schools.